F*ck the police?

What’s the probability that you won’t get a parking ticket or moving violation this year? This value might just depend on the population of your city, the number of police where you live and work, and the traffic-ticket quota assigned to each officer …

While you try to figure out this value, check out this expose written up by Tracy Oppenheimer for reason.com … The title of her revealing report is “Cop Fired for Speaking Out Against Ticket and Arrest Quotas.”

It is well-known that police officers typically lie on the witness stand in criminal trials (see, e.g., this recent report in the New York Times on why police lie under oath), so why do the police also have such tyrannical authority to impose fines on citizens for mere regulatory offenses?

This is why prior probability thinks that most police officers are just glorified “tax collectors” …

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About F. E. Guerra-Pujol

When I’m not blogging, I am a business law professor at the University of Central Florida.
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2 Responses to F*ck the police?

  1. The Professors Wife's avatar The Professors Wife says:

    The police are the real criminals! What is the probability that more will be like this guy and say f the blue shield?

    • F. E. Guerra-Pujol's avatar enrique says:

      That is a good question. I would say the probability is not zero because, although potential whistle-blowers won’t want to lose their jobs, there are enough former or disgruntled employees within police departments to make these disclosures more likely in the future. I also appreciate your comment about the “real criminals” … many people simply assume that the police always enforce the law and comply with the laws they are enforcing, but in fact, each individual police officer can not only choose his level of enforcement but also choose whether to comply with the law or evade it.

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